In several respects,
this dated page, which has been cleanly torn out of a grey notebook with
squared paper, constitutes a remarkable document deriving from Vertov’s
red pen.

To date, no comparable
example is known in which the glowing champion of documentary film made
a preparatory list of camera shots, picture contents and compositions
and extensively commented upon them. Although it is not a storyboard in
the strict sense – since it does not present a cohesive sequence – the
document does give us an idea of the relationship between the plan and
its implementation.

In the first place,
the text is impressive on account of its resolute, almost energetic tone.
This results from the aggressive vocabulary used. The contraction of syntax
and rigorous economy in the use of lettering testifies to Vertov’s adherence
to the principle of efficiency. The individual sentences and fragments
of sentences are often put together from abbreviations of words and in
fact even the film title itself, C Celovek s kinoapparatom, becomes
the acronym ‘C c.s.a.’. At the same time, by making a reference to Alexander
Pushkin’s Mednyj vsadnik [‘The Bronze Horseman’], Vertov was able
to evoke the whole drama of a historical verse epic.

Even at the top of
this page, some notions are immediately visualised by means of a small
line drawing. One should notice the difference between the words ‘camera
lens’ (point 1), which are drawn in profile, as in a pictogram, and the
‘camera muzzle’ (point 2), additionally emphasised, which targets the
viewer directly.

While the visual elements
are at first still integrated into the lines of text or at least match
the format of the line spacing, in point 5 they continue to develop until
the language of the words is replaced by that of the images. In the final
emblem (point 8) this culminates in a complete shift away from the written
word and towards the visual idea. Here, quite without captions, what has
been created is more or less an iconogram for the phrase ‘first Russian
film without intertitles’. In going beyond the frame, the camera tripod
here builds a bridge between the world of the frame to be projected and
the real world of the filmmaker. As in the film itself, the self-referential
circle between production and reception has been brought to a close.

This preparatory sketch
arose during shooting, as a set of definite instructions for Vertov’s
brother Michail Kaufman, the film’s hero and cinematographer. Apart from
the precise of movements of the on-screen camera, it also visually develops
concepts for multiple exposures, i.e. montage in the frame.

Some of them can be
immediately recognised in the film – e.g. those for points 2 and 8 (cf.
the frame enlargements from the film). Others can be derived from the
text, such as the analogy with a giant or with Pushkin’s hovering and
all-seeing horseman. More abstract visual concepts, such as the fusion
of operator and apparatus may also be identified. The head becomes the
doppelganger of the camera housing, with a nose in the form of
a lens. In a further drawing, the borders blur between the legs of the
hero and those of the tripod. Body and camera merge and determine each
other.

The lens itself is
infrequently directed towards the protagonists and in several frames one
may notice a certain tendency towards symmetry and consequently towards
what can be controlled and overseen.

In the midst of the
aeroplanes that are flying around, the arms are raised like wings. Next
to them, the torso is brought into harmony with the body of the camera.
Vertov’s associations were also incorporated into the poster by the Stenberg
brothers.

While movement is indicated
by means of arrows, pin stripes (trouser legs) or factory smoke, there
are some frames which are more difficult to interpret. These include the
three sketches in which the floor (the world as seen from the ‘Giant’s’
perspective) is filmed. When examined more closely, they literally topple
over and out of the vertical level of the two-dimensional drawing. As
in a picture puzzle, the man with the camera here seems to be standing
on firm ground, yet the back wall seems to fold backwards and literally
surround him.

frame
enlargements: Georg Wasner, Oesterreichisches Filmmuseum

Two
frames further on, the protagonist finally appears to slip through the
folded down space (radial arrow!) and be circumscribed by it, while his
attribute, the camera, is able to move freely between them. The detached
gaze. Or as Vertov himself put it:

My film therefore
signifies the struggle
between everyday vision andcinematic vision,the struggle
between real space and cinematicspace,the struggle
between real time and cinematictime.